- Research at AUC
- Events
"How Arabs See Their Present and Future: Survey of Views of Ordinary Citizens"
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Guest Speaker: Dr. Mark Tessler - Samuel J. Eldersveld Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan.
Comments By: Dr. Magued Osman - CEO, The Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research "Baseera"; Professor of Statistics, Cairo University; Former Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
Moderator: Dr. Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science
What fo findings of the well-established Arab Barometer and other surveys tell us? Mark Tessler, a pioneer of public opinion research , reviews survey data to reveal how ordinary Arab citizens respond to major current, or possible future, issues.
"Harder than My Political Battles: Overcoming My Cancer" - (On the Occasion of International Women's Day). February 27, 2019.
Guest Speaker: Ms Anissa Hassouna - Member of Parliament
Chair: Professor Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science.
Anissa Hassouna is a member of the Egyptian parliament and the founder and chairperson of the Enlightened Egypt Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that promotes and raises awareness about the values of citizenship and gender equality. Previously, she served as executive director of the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation and has been active in various civil society organizations. Hassouna was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the Arab world by Arabian Business and CEO Middle East. Her book on her experience battling cancer is a rare and brilliant combination of a personal memoir of female resilience and involvement in public life.
"Decoding Turkey" - March 14, 2019
European or Neo-Ottoman? Secular or Islamist?
Democratic or authoritarian? Where does Turkey at present stand exactly?
Guest Speaker: Ambassador Dr. Alaa ElHadidi -Former Ambassador to Turkey, Russia and Romania; Former Director of Institute of Diplomatic Studies and Spokesman for the Egyptian Prime Minister.
Chair: Professor Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science.
"Evidencing the Middle East: The AUC Forum Data Bank" - September 22, 2019
Guest Speakers: Amr Shaarawi, Professor, Department of Physics; Chair, Univeristy Senate
Iman Megahed, AVP for Digital Innovation and Chief Strategy Officer
Moderator: Professor Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science.
The Middle East continues to be the most central and newsworthy region, globally. However, we are drowned by information rather than analysis and often opinion instead of evidence.
To help researchers, students and even the interested public to cope with these (mis)information challenges, the AUC Forum Data Bank has been in preparation for more than six years. With the help of the Office of Strategy Management and Institutional Effectiveness (formerly DAIR), it presents data on 35 variables — mostly for the period from 1970 to 2018 — that aims to decode both the present and future of this region. The data bank is designed to be both user-friendly and interactive.
" How Egypt's Foreign Policy is Made: شهادتي" - October 2nd, 2019
Guest Speakers: Ambassador Ahmed Aboul Gheit - Secretary General of the League of Arab States
Moderator: Professor Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science.
As a pivotal state, Egypt's foreign policy has constants, "Arab Spring" or not. What are these constants? But specially, how do they cope with evolving regional-global context and new challenges? No better witness can guide us for answers to these questions other than Ambassador Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foremer foreign minister (2004-2011) and current Secretary-General of the League of Arab States.
" Egyptians' Daily Security and Ethiopia's Dam: Is Desalination a Way Out of the Water War"? - November 13th, 2019
Guest Speakers:
Professor Adham Ramadan - Dean of Graduate Studies; Professor of Chemistry
Moderator:
Professor Bahgat Korany - Director, AUC Forum; Professor, Department of Political Science.
Egypt — like many countries in the Middle East — has gone beyond water-poverty to what the United Nations calls the level of «water stress.» Across history, droughts have been associated with population displacement, disappearance of cities and even decline of civilizations. Since Egypt is not a rainy country and Egyptians count for 94% of their daily lives on Nile waters, serious security risks are becoming increasingly imminent after building the Renaissance Dam? Is there a way out of an impending national catastrophe? What do research findings tell us?
2018-2017 Events
Panels
Trump's Foreign Policy and the Middle East (September 19, 2018) with Professor William Quandt, Former Staff, National Security Council and Emeritus Professor University of Virginia and Professor Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland.
This panel discussed Trump's Distinctive Foreign Policy: What it Means for the Middle East (Professor William Quandt) and What Do the Polls Say? (Professor Shibley Telhami). To view a video recording of this panel, click here.
"A Two Culture Problem? A Personal Account of Success" (November 14, 2018). Speaker: Amr Shaarawi - Professor, Department of Physics and Chair, AUC Senate.
Commentator/Discussant: Tahia Abdel Nasser - Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature and Director, Graduate Studies.
Chair: Bahgat Korany - Professor, Department of Political Science and Director, AUC Forum
The debate on science versus literature and the arts has been raging since novelist CP Snow raised the issue in the University of Cambridge's Rede Lectures in 1959. In 2008, the Times Literary Supplement included Snow's book in its list of 100 books that most influenced Western public discourse since World War II.
Is our liberal education a way out of this schism between science and literary entrepreneurship?
Is there a third way out of this educational apartheid?
Coming from a background of physics but also an award-winning novelist, Professor Amr Shaarawi will present his experience to guide us. Professor Tahia Abdel Nasser on the literature side will comment and elaborate. To view a video recording of this panel click here.
Conference
"Camp David at 40" - كامب ديفيد بعد اربعين عاما (September 18, 2018) with: Nabil ElAraby, Former Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Former Secretary General of the League of Arab States; Bassma Kodmani, Executive Director and Co-founder of the Arab Reform Initiative; Professor William Quandt, Former Staff, National Security Council and Emeritus Professor University of Virginia; Professor Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland. The Conference included a Personal Message From President Jimmy Carter. To read the message click here.
In the conflict-ridden Middle East, the 1978-Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel are a milestone. This 13-day meeting under the leadership of U.S. President Jimmy Carter took place like a suspense story, a thriller movie, with delegations occasionally packing to leave rather than continuing negotiations. In fact, skepticism about the results continued until the very end. Just before signing the accords, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel resigned his post, becoming the second Egyptian foreign minister to resign in less than a year.
The Camp David Accords are a milestone in another sense. With the biggest Arab country signing a unilateral peace treaty with the Arab world’s traditional enemy while a state of war still existed after four regional wars, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat set a new foreign policy behavior that will determine the region’s future. In retrospect in 2018, we can indeed talk about the Camp David Regional Order. In addition to Carter’s substantive message, this international one- day conference will gather well-known experts, some participated in the conference back in 1978, to recollect, inform and analyze.
To view a video recording of this conference click here.
Panels
1. "Egypt, the Middle East and the World: A New Paradigm of Humanity?" (March 13, 2017) with El Mostafa Higazy, founder of the NASAQ Foundation, humanist, strategic thinker and authority on institutional sustainable development, and national strategic adviser to Egypt’s former interim President Adly Mansour, as well as Bahgat Korany, professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the AUC Forum.
This panel discussed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and delived into how the world left the Industrial Age behind. The 2011 Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement signaled the dawn of the post-industrial and post-knowledge human paradigm. For Egypt, the Middle East and the world, is this a time for disruption, or a time of constructive sociopolitical and socioeconomic evolution? How has Egypt handled this double leap and where next? To view a video recording of this panel, click here.
2."Hope and Disappointment in Politics: Women and the Egyptian Uprising" (March 29, 2017) with Nermin Allam who is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow Visiting Scholar at Princeton University, will be the main speaker along with Bahgat Korany, professor and director of the Department of Political Science and AUC Forum.
This talk focused on the oral history of women's engagement in the January 25th uprising. It documented women’s accounts in this important historical juncture and situates their experience within the socioeconomic, political trajectories and historical contours of Egypt. To view a video recording of this panel, click here.
Conference
“Managing Middle East Diversity: the Modalities” (April 23-24, 2017)
Though dominated by the Arabic language and Islam, the nearly 500 million people of the Middle East today display great ethnic and cultural diversity. Though a potential asset, diversity can also cause tension, threatening the state itself.
The AUC Forum and Ibn Khaldoun Center hosted this international conference to examine the strategies devised to manage diversity either destructively or creatively. The emphasis was on the modalities to get out of this conflictual dilemma. Where are the hopeful examples, and what can be learned from them? Is a balance-sheet of different models available/possible to guide the future of the region?
The conference brought together ethnic and religious scholars, policy professionals, and diverse young leaders to offer their perspectives on how to reach such constructive modalities and initiate a new phase in the Middle East.
The AUC Forum and the Ibn Khaldoun Center hosted this international conference to examine the strategies devised to manage diversity, either destructively or creatively. The emphasis was on the modalities in which to appease the conflictual dilemma. Where are the hopeful examples, and what can be learned from them? Is a balance-sheet of different models available/possible to guide the future of the region?
The conference brought together ethnic and religious scholars, policy professionals and diverse young leaders to offer their perspectives on how to reach such constructive modalities, in order to initiate a new phase in the Middle East.
To view the conference agenda, click here.
To view the videos of the conference sessions, please click here.
Workshop
APSA MENA Workshop (June 3, 2017)
International closed workshop held in cooperation with American Political Science Association for manuscript development for early career MENA-based scholars.